It does not happen every day that news related to computer technology - news we report on every day - makes its way to the headline news programs and newspapers here in my home country, The Netherlands. So when it does, I am usually on the edge of my seat, simply because it offers an interesting glimpse into how 'normal' people perceive our little world. The last few days, however, that casual interest has made way for something else - tooth gnashing irritation.

That was the poing; "Zealot" is an offensive term and if you read my comment you'll notice that I'm saying that only the Zealot minority within the FOSS greater community go around telling people that Linux is the only solution in *every* situation. Unfortunately, these are usually also the loudest spoken and oh how the anti-FOSS people like to point to the smaller minority like it represents us all.

(see what I did there? I used "us" being that I've run Linux based OS since before Redhat removed .mp3 support and forked off Fedora that that was when I moved to Mandrake, now Mandriva.)

My intent was to point out that the minority are the only people saying that one kernel fits all; this to head off anyone that was going to think they spoke for all of us. Hense why I mentioned that *even* Mr. Stallman recommends using closed source and/or proprietary software when no other solution fitting the problem is available and then *only* until a more open solution becomes available. In short; use the ATI binary blob if it works for you but change to the open source kernel mod when it becomes available and mature enough to replace the blob.

"Unfortunately for you. It is you that is in the minority, nobody here will agree with you that access to source is not the best way to ensure that your products stay compatible"

Unfortunately nothing big guy. I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was bashing FOSS but that seems to be what you indicate in your response. I'd sudgest reading the initial post *then* my response too it and subsiquent responses too and from myself along down the thread.

And by "even before OSS hit mainstream" do you mean;
a. before the MIT model railroad club came out from under the table and discovered these crazy digital adding machine contraptions

b. before the hacker community moved to Unix from VMS

c. before a young computer enclined business genious wrote a very offensive public letter to the homebrew computer club

d. before Mr. Stallman publicly outlined the hacker communities reasons for freedom of source with GPLv1

e. before Mr. Raymond wrote the Cathedral and the Bizzar

f. before Netscape joined with Mr. Raymond to create opensource.org and release there browser source under the Mozilla name

g. (or) before Microsoft realized this "internet" thing may be relavent and that that obscure "linux" kernel thingy was a serious potential threat to there status quo

I'm not sure which greater increase in FOSS becoming main stream your refering too. My god man; I may show a new registration date but I've been reading osnews forums for a while and mucking with the inner workings of the machine for a heck of a lot longer. There's pleanty of topics I lack knowledge on but computers and computer history isn't one of them.

Are you sure that I'm really in the minority here that would argue that closed and proprietary development models result in the better programming or did you maybe jump to a conclusion too quickly? I'm just not understand where I slammed open source development to give you any such idea. I may have kept my comment balanced rather than going to the Zealot or Fanboy extremes of the spectrum but that just makes for a reasonable discussion.

Here's a quarter kid, go buy yourself some reading comprehension lessons. I'd give you the whole 50 cents but I need the other quarter for my own spelling and grammar lessons.

Anyway, I'd take offense but really I'm just boggled and falling off my chair laughing at how badly my comment was read. Stick around kid, you may realize the shots your taking are all friendly fire.

hehe.. as a complete tangent, I'm laughing loud at the here "cyclops" responds to "jabbotts". Unless your also a monocular (that's a big word meaning "only has vision in one eye") person then that's just all kinds of irony. Cheers, it was an unexpected bit of humour that'll keep me giggling all day.